0f 


€?tti«tmtt 


M  E  L  O  K 
1  285 


MR.  RALPH  WHEELOCK 
PURITAN 


A  PAPER  READ  BEFORE 

Connecticut  Historical  &ocietp 
NOVEMBER  ?,  1899 


BY 


REV.  LEWIS  W.  ^ICKS,  M.  A. 

A  Member  of  the  Society  and  a  Descendant  of  Mr.  Wheelock 


WITH  AN  APPENDIX 
BY 

THOMAS  S.  WHEELOCK 


PUBLISHED  BY  REQUEST 


^artforb 

The  Case,  Lockwood  &  Brainard  Company 
1899 


W4H5 


PREFACE 


;O  giving  my  consent  to  the  publication  of 
the  following  paper,  after  its  presentation 
before  the  Historical  Society  of  Connec- 
ticut, I  was  influenced  by  a  circle  of  Wheelock 
friends,  to  whom  I  was  led  to  make  known  its 
contents  several  weeks  before  the  public  reading. 
But  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  paper  should  not  go 
out  alone,  inasmuch  as  Mr.  Thomas  S.  Wheelock, 
who  has  spent  much  valuable  time  in  tracing  out 
the  origin  of  the  Wheelock  family,  had  facts  in 
his  possession  which  cannot  but  be  of  special 
interest  to  the  subscribers  for  this  booklet.  I 
therefore  requested  him  to  prepare  the  subjoined 
appendix,  which  will  be  found  to  contain  impor- 
tant fundamental  facts  about  the  lineage  and 
immediate  descendants  of  our  common  ancestor 
that  will  enable  present-day  descendants,  who 
may  so  desire,  to  make  independent  investiga- 
tions along  the  lines  of  their  own  particular  de- 
scent. But  in  sending  out  this  little  production 
we  have  had  no  idea  of  publishing  a  "  Wheelock 
Book,"  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the  term  ; 
nor  of  making  any  pecuniary  profit  out  of  our 


iv  Preface 

conjoint  enterprise.  Our  chief  object,  (mine  in 
permitting  the  paper  to  be  published,  and  Mr. 
Wheelock's  in  adding  his  appendix,)  is  to  lay 
before  the  descendants  of  Mr.  Ralph  Wheelock 
some  facts  about  his  life  and  character,  which 
seem  never  to  have  been  put  in  a  form  to  give 
due  weight  to  the  influence  which  our  worthy 
progenitor  exerted  in  the  early  days  of  Massachu- 
setts history.  In  order  to  insure  ourselves  against 
pecuniary  loss  we  have  been  obliged  to  charge, 
what  might  seem  to  some,  a  large  price  for  so 
small  a  book.  But  it  should  be  understood  that 
under  the  circumstances  we  could  venture  to 
print  only  a  small  number  of  copies,  thus  increas- 
ing the  cost  of  publication,  per  copy,  far  beyond 
what  would  be  involved  in  the  publication  of  a 
large  edition.  For  our  outlay  of  time,  which  has 
been  far  from  inconsiderable,  we  ask  nothing  but 
the  kindly  judgment  of  the  kinsmen  into  whose 
hands  this  booklet  may  come.  And  it  is  our  hope 
that  some  profit  and  enjoyment  may  be  derived 
from  its  perusal  by  not  a  few  descendants  of  that 
grand  old  Puritan  ancestor,  whose  influence  con- 
tinues to  be  felt  in  this  land  of  his  adoption,  and 
will  be  felt  so  long  as  Puritan  principles  and 
ideals  shall  continue  to  exert  any  power  upon  the 
people  of  our  beloved  country. 

LEWIS  WILDER  HICKS. 
HARTFORD,  CONN. 


MR.  RALPH  WHEELOCK 
PURITAN 


IN  the  brief  references  to  Mr.  Ralph  Whee- 
lock  which  are  found  in  biographical 
notices  of  his  honored  great-grandson, 
Dr.  Eleazer  Wheelock,  the  first  president  of  Dart- 
mouth College,  he  is  said  to  have  been  born  in 
Shropshire,  England,  in  1600  A.  D.,  and  to  have 
been  educated  at  Clare  Hall,  Cambridge.  In  such 
references  no  allusion  is  made  to  his  ancestral 
antecedents,  nor  has  the  most  careful  examina- 
tion of  accessible  biographical  material  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  his  parentage.  It  is  highly 
probable,  however,  that  he  was  a  descendant  of 
Hugh  de  Whelock  who,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Second,  received  from  Roger  Mainwaring  a  title 
to  all  of  the  latter's  claim  to  the  village  of  Whee- 
lock, in  Cheshire  County,  which  he  had  previously 
held.  It  is  also  probable  that  Ralph  Wheelock 
was  a  relative  of  a  certain  Abraham  Wheelock, 
who  was  also  a  native  of  Shropshire,  who  took  his 
degree  of  M.A.  at  Cambridge  University  in  1618, 
was  admitted  to  Clare  Hall  as  a  fellow  about  the 


6  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

time  that  Ralph  must  have  entered  the  same  col- 
lege, and  who,  later  on,  became  the  first  professor 
of  the  Arabic  and  Saxon  tongues  in  the  university, 
published,  among  other  important  works,  an  edi- 
tion of  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  History  with  the 
Saxon  paraphrase  of  Alfred,  and  became  the 
librarian  of  the  university.  That  Ralph  Whee- 
lock was  the  only  one  of  the  Puritan  ministers, 
with  whose  names  we  are  familiar,  to  graduate 
from  Clare  College  (all  the  others  of  them,  who 
were  Cambridge  graduates,  taking  their  degrees 
from  Emmanuel,  Jesus,  or  some  other  of  the  sev- 
eral colleges  of  the  university),  would  seem  to 
point  to  a  special  reason  for  his  going  to  Clare 
Hall.  May  that  reason  not  have  lain  in  the  fact 
that  he  had  a  scholarly  relative  there  from  his 
own  county  of  Shropshire,  the  before-mentioned 
Abraham  Wheelock?  As  the  latter  was  but 
seven  years  Ralph's  senior,  he  may  have  been  an 
elder  brother.  We  shall  certainly  be  pardoned 
for  indulging  this  supposition  ;  or  at  least  for 
holding  that  Ralph  was  some  sort  of  a  kinsman 
of  the  Cambridge  professor  and  librarian.  Rea- 
soning backwards  from  this  conjecture  we  may 
well  believe  that  our  subject  was  born  of  "  re- 
spectable parents,"  to  say  the  least,  and  that  he 
was  also  the  child  of  those  who  set  a  high  value 
upon  education.  Add  to  what  has  been  said 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  7 

about  the  family  of  Wheelock  in  Cheshire 
County,  to  the  north  of  Shropshire,  that  they  had 
a  coat-of-arms,  and  we  are  prepared  to  believe 
that  Ralph  Wheelock  also  belonged  to  "  a  family 
of  importance,"  in  the  accepted  meaning  of  the 
expression. 

At  all  events  he  graduated  at  Clare  Hall  in 
1626,  and  took  his  degree  of  master  of  arts  there 
in  1631.  Of  this  college  it  may  be  of  some  inter- 
est to  know  that  it  was  founded  in  1326  and  bore 
the  name  of  University  College  until  1338-9, 
when,  owing  to  a  large  gift  from  Elizabeth 
Burgh,  Countess  of  Clare,  the  name  was  changed 
to  Clare  College.  The  motives  which  led  the 
noble  foundress  to  endow  the  institution  are  so 
beautifully  set  forth  in  her  own  language  that 
her  words  are  herewith  given  as  follows :  "  Expe- 
rience doth  plainly  teach  us,  that  in  every  de- 
gree, ecclesiastical  as  well  as  temporal,  skill  in 
learning  is  no  small  advantage  ;  which,  although 
sought  for  in  many  ways  by  many  persons,  is 
found  in  most  perfection  in  the  university,  where 
general  study  is  known  to  flourish.  Moreover, 
when  it  has  been  found,  it  sends  out  its  disciples, 
who  have  tasted  sweetness,  skillful  and  fit  mem- 
bers of  God's  Church  and  the  state,  who  shall,  as 
their  merits  demand,  rise  to  various  ranks.  .  .  . 
We  have  had  in  view  the  object,  that  the  pearl  of 


8  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

science  .  .  .  may  not  lie  under  a  bushel  but 
be  extended  further  and  wider,  and  when  ex- 
tended give  light  to  them  that  walk  in  the  dark 
paths  of  ignorance."  In  a  petition  addressed  in 
1445  by  Margaret  of  Anjou  to  her  husband, 
Henry  the  Sixth,  she  speaks  of  Pembroke  Col- 
lege and  Clare  Hall  as  being  "  of  grete  reputation 
for  good  and  worshipful  clerkis  that  by  grete 
multitude  have  be  bredde  and  brought  forth 
in  theym."  Chaucer,  "the  father  of  English 
Poetry,"  was  reputed  to  have  been  a  student  in 
Clare  Hall ;  but  there  is  not  sufficient  proof  to 
warrant  the  belief  that  he  was  ever  there  in  such 
a  capacity.  Before  the  coming  of  Ralph  Whee- 
lock to  its  quiet  cloisters  it  had  sent  out  a  number 
of  scholars  who  had  greatly  distinguished  them- 
selves in  church  and  state,  and  its  able  master 
during  the  time  of  young  Wheelock's  residence 
was  one  of  its  alumni,  Thomas  Paske,  D.D.,  by 
name.  As  an  indication  of  how  the  college  was 
regarded  at  that  particular  time  the  following 
statement  may  be  quoted :  "  The  names  of 
George  Ruggle,  Nicholas  Farrar,  Abraham 
Wheelock,  and  Augustine  Lindsell,  among  the 
fellows,  are  .  .  .  suggestive  of  an  atmosphere 
of  genuine  culture."  While  it  is  true  that  a  chair 
of  mathematics  had  not  then  been  established  in 
the  University  of  Cambridge,  and  Sir  Isaac  New- 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  9 

ton  had  not  been  born  to  give  an  impetus  to 
scientific  investigation ;  yet  Greek,  Latin,  and 
Hebrew,  and  dialectics  were  thoroughly  taught, 
to  the  making  of  close  thinkers  and  sound  reason- 
ers.  In  1617  the  students  at  the  Hall  numbered 
one  hundred  and  ten,  which  was  a  little  less  than 
the  average  attendance  upon  the  several  colleges 
which  made  up  the  university. 

That  Ralph  Wheelock  was  a  good  scholar  when 
he  received  his  master's  degree,  in  1631,  might  be 
presumed  from  what  has  already  been  said.  This 
presumption  may  be  further  strengthened  when 
the  fact  is  taken  into  consideration  that  John  Mil- 
ton, John  Eliot,  Samuel  Stone,  Samuel  Eaton,  John 
Norton,  Thomas  Shepard,  and  other  eminent  Puri- 
tans were  fellow  students  with  him  in  Cambridge 
University ;  and  it  will  be  still  further  confirmed 
when  we  shall  come  to  review  his  career  in  New 
England. 

That  he  had  been  subjected  to  influences  while 
in  the  university  which  had  brought  him  into 
sympathy  with  the  liberal  party  of  his  (day,  may 
be  inferred  from  the  well-known  fact  that,  as  early 
as  the  last  third  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Cambridge 
had  become  the  center  of  that  movement  in  the 
national  church  which  gave  rise  to  the  use  of  the 
name  of  Puritan;  a  movement  which,  from  that 
time  on,  had  become  more  and  more  powerful  in 

2 


10  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

the  university,  and  which  had  embraced  within  its 
influence  many  of  the  choicest  of  the  Cambridge 
men.  This  fact,  when  put  with  another,  that 
Wheelock  was  an  eminent  Puritan  minister  before 
he  left  England,  leads  to  the  above  conclusion, 
that  when  he  left  Clare  Hall  with  his  master's 
degree  he  was  a  Puritan  of  the  Thomas  Shepard, 
Samuel  Stone,  and  George  Phillips  type,  who 
believed  in  the  reform  of  the  crying  abuses  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  who  would  gladly  have 
remained  in  the  mother  country  to  help  her  work 
out  the  problems  of  church  and  state  which  were 
then  confronting  her. 

It  was  more  than  a  respectable  party  to  which 
he  joined  himself.  As  the  historian,  Dr.  Palfrey, 
says :  "  The  Puritanism  of  the  first  forty  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century  was  not  tainted  with 
degrading  or  ungraceful  associations  of  any  sort. 
The  rank,  the  wealth,  the  chivalry,  the  genius, 
the  learning,  the  accomplishments,  the  social 
refinements  and  elegance  of  the  time,  were  largely 
represented  in  its  ranks."  The  same  writer  says : 
"  The  leading  emigrants  to  Massachusetts  were  of 
that  brotherhood  of  man  who,  by  force  of  social 
consideration,  as  well  as  of  intelligence  and  reso- 
lute patriotism,  moulded  the  public  opinion  and 
action  of  England  in  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century."  It  was  with  such  men  that 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  11 

Ralph  Wheelock  was  identified  in  England  after 
his  graduation;  but  where  he  was  settled,  and 
what  peculiar  experiences  of  a  trying  nature  he 
endured  for  conscience'  sake,  we  have  had  no 
means  of  finding  out.  Sprague,  in  his  "  Annals 
of  the  American  Pulpit,"  and  Drs.  McClure  and 
Parish,  in  their  life  of  Dr.  Eleazer  Wheelock, 
speak  of  him  as  an  eminent  non-conformist 
preacher  who  suffered  persecution  for  dissenting 
from  the  established  religion.  It  is  not  unlikely 
that  he  underwent  an  experience  similar  to  that 
of  his  fellow-student,  Thomas  Shepard,  who  says, 
"  he,"  the  bishop,  "  fired  me  out  of  this  place," 
referring  to  the  loss  of  his  living ;  and  who  quotes 
in  his  autobiography  the  charge  which  Laud  gave 
him,  as  follows :  "  I  charge  you  that  you  neither 
preach,  read,  marry,  bury,  or  exercise  any  minis- 
terial functions  in  any  part  of  my  Diocess ;  for  if 
you  do,  and  I  hear  of  it,  I'll  be  upon  your  back 
and  follow  you  wherever  you  go,  in  any  part  of 
this  kingdom,  and  so  everlastingly  disenable  you." 
In  view  of  such  charges  as  this,  and  the  accordant 
treatment  to  which  Laud  knew  so  well  how  to 
subject  the  Puritan  clergy,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
many  of  them  preferred  to  brave  the  dangers  of 
an  ocean  voyage,  to  face  the  rigors  of  an  inhospita- 
ble climate,  and  even  expose  themselves  to  the 
wiles  of  the  Red  Men,  if  so  be  that  they  might 


12  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

worship  God  after  the  dictates  of  their  consciences. 
If  England  had  no  use  for  them  but  abuse,  they 
would  go  where  they  could  do  something  for 
themselves  and  their  families,  and  build  up  a  new 
commonwealth  upon  the  principles  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  which  they  had  vainly  contended  in 
the  mother  land.     So  they  came  to  New  England, 
no  less  than  sixty  graduates  of  Cambridge  and 
Oxford  coming  between  the  years  1630  and  1639, 
the  larger  part  of  whom  settled  in  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  and  its  immediate  vicinity.     Ralph 
Wheelock  was  one  of  them.     He  left  England  in 
1637,  (being  then  in  his  prime,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
seven  years,)  attended  by  his  wife,  Rebecca,  and 
his  young  child,  Gershom.     "  The  ship  in  which 
he  embarked  was  once  driven  back  by  tempests, 
the  voyage  was  long  and  distressing,"  and  while 
at  sea  his  wife  gave  birth  to  a  daughter.     The 
year  in  which  he  left  old  England  John  Harvard 
and  John  Davenport  came  to  this  country ;  with 
the  latter  of  whom,  as  Dr.  Bacon  informs  us,  a 
considerable  band  of  colonists  came  over  in  the 
ship   Hector.      But  whether  Wheelock  was  with 
either  of  those  Puritan  ministers  on  the  voyage 
we  are  not  able  to  affirm.     After  his  arrival  he 
went    to   Water  town,    that    flourishing    Puritan 
settlement  of  Massachusetts,  from  which  so  many 
of   our  first   New  England   families  trace  their 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  13 

descent,  but  where,  in  1637,  there  were  quite 
enough  families  to  occupy  the  farming  lands  of 
the  immediate  vicinity,  and  to  furnish  a  surplus 
for  the  colonizing  of  adjacent  territory.  Only  a 
short  distance  from  Watertown,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Charles  River,  was  a  beautiful  piece  of 
country,  to  which  some  of  the  Watertown  families 
had  begun  to  move  as  early  as  1635,  and  to  which 
Mr.  Wheelock  went  soon  enough  after  his  arrival 
in  Massachusetts  to  be  reckoned  among  the  early 
settlers  and  one  of  the  efficient  founders  of  what 
had  become,  in  1636,  the  town  of  Dedham,  but 
which  was  first  called  "  Contentment,"  a  place 
that  was  noted  for  the  generally  excellent  charac- 
ter of  its  founders,  and  that  has,  up  to  the  present 
time,  maintained  a  high  standard  of  citizenship, 
culture,  and  general  prosperity.  There,  with  oth- 
ers, Mr.  Wheelock  was  assigned  a  tract  of  land, 
and  began  that  useful  course  of  life  to  which 
repeated  reference  was  made,  at  subsequent  dates, 
in  the  church  and  town  records  of  Dedham  and 
Medfield,  but  which  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
emphasized  by  any  writer  to  the  extent  of  its 
merit.  In  1634  a  certain  William  Wood  wrote: 
"  He  must  have  more  than  a  boy's  head,  and  no 
less  than  a  man's  strength,  that  intends  to  live 

comfortably All  New  England  must 

be  workers  in  some  kind."    That  Ralph  Wheelock 


14  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

possessed  the  necessary  qualifications,  thus  re- 
ferred to,  for  comfortable  living  and  for  doing 
useful  work  in  a  new  country  is  amply  shown  in 
the  story  which  the  records  tell  of  his  learning, 
versatility  in  employment,  and  success  in  impress- 
ing himself  upon  the  lives  of  his  cotemporaries, 
and  of  his  own  and  their  descendants. 

Now  we  should  naturally  look  to  see  this  man, 
who  had  been  trained  in  the  university  and  who 
had  become  eminent  as  a  clergyman,  enter  upon 
the  work  of  the  minister  and  follow  it  as  a  calling 
in  the  new  world,  as  so  many  of  his  Puritan  asso- 
ciates had  done  and  were  doing  about  him  in  the 
vicinity  of  Boston.  But  while  we  are  informed 
that  he  was  asked  to  take  charge  of  particular 
churches,  and  did  occasionally  preach  in  settle- 
ments about  Dedham,  yet  he  did  not  consent  to 
settle  as  the  pastor  of  a  church,  but  gave  himself 
up  to  the  doing  of  such  work  of  a  miscellaneous 
character  as  might  further  the  material  and  intel- 
lectual, as  well  as  the  spiritual,  interests  of  the  two 
new  communities  with  which  he  successively  cast 
in  his  lot.  It  was  a  saying  of  Cotton  that  there 
was  "  nothing  cheap  in  New  England  but  milk 
and  ministers."  Perhaps  it  was  because  others 
wanted  the  pulpits,  and  because  his  heart  was  full 
of  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  that  Mr.  Wheelock 
refused  to  monopolize  a  pastorate.  Be  this  as  it 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  15 

may,  without  the  standing  place  which  the  Con- 
gregational minister  occupied  by  virtue  of  his  set- 
tlement over  a  church,  Ralph  Wheelock  became 
a  very  important  factor  in  the  problems  which 
the  pioneers  had  to  work  out  in  the  early  days  of 
Dedham  and  Medfield.  In  tracing  his  services 
we  shall  not  only  follow  the  course  of  one  man, 
but  shall  also  be  able  to  form  a  partial  estimate  of 
what  was  involved  in  the  making  of  a  New  Eng- 
land town,  as  well  as  of  the  meaning  of  the  fact 
that  so  many  of  our  forefathers  were  men  of  high 
character  and  of  rare  cultivation. 

The  first  important  thing  which  Mr.  Wheelock 
is  known  to  have  done  after  moving  from  Water- 
town  to  Dedham  was  the  signing  of  his  name,  in 
July,  1637,  to  the  "  Dedham  Covenant."  His  is 
the  tenth  name  on  the  list  of  something  over  one 
hundred  who,  from  the  time  when  the  first  set- 
tlers entered  the  new  town  until  it  no  longer 
became  obligatory  to  sign  it,  subscribed  their 
names  to  this  covenant ;  which  instrument  was,  in 
fact,  the  constitution  of  that  little  company  of  set- 
tlers. For  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  first 
code  of  Colony  Laws,  known  as  the  "  Body  of 
Liberties,"  was  not  formed  until  1641.  This 
ancient  Dedham  agreement  begins  with  these 
beautiful  sentences :  "We  whose  names  are  here 
unto  subscribed,  doe  in  the  fear  and  Reverence 


16  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

of  our  Almightie  God,  Mutually  and  severally 
promise  amongst  ourselves  and  each  to  other  to 
professe  and  practice  one  trueth  according  to  that 
most   perfect   rule,   the    foundation    whereof    is 
Everlasting  Love."   The  covenant  further  declares 
that  all  persons  were  to  be  excluded  from  the 
Dedham  community  who  were  not  likely  to  be 
of  one  heart  with  the  subscribers,  and  would  not 
seek  with  them  the  good  of  the  whole  body  rather 
than  of  the  individual,  to  the  ends  of  edification 
and  peace.     Moreover,  it  provides  for  a  settlement 
of    differences  between  disagreeing    parties    by 
reference  to  two  or  three  persons ;  imposes  the 
duty  of  land-owners  to  pay  their  share  of  taxes 
ratably  with  other  men,  and  announces  the  pur- 
pose of  the  settlement  to  be  the  establishment  of 
"a  loving  and  comfortable  societie."     Made  up, 
as  that  body  of  settlers  is  known  to  have  been,  of 
exceptionally  intelligent  men   and  women,  it  is 
not  strange  that  they  should  have  made   some 
such  provision,  that  would  give  promise  of  assur- 
ing to  them  and  to  their  posterity  the  continuance 
of  a  well-ordered  and  moral  society.     As  pioneers 
in  an  enterprise  of  so  much  moment,  they  had  a 
right  to  determine  the  character  of  the  town  into 
which  they  were   throwing  their  all.     We  can 
easily  believe,  then,  that  to  this  wholesome  cove- 
nant Mr.  Wheelock  signed  his  name  with  due 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  17 

solemnity,  and  also  with  joy  at  the  thought  of  the 
possibilities  which  opened  before  him  and  his 
family  in  a  settlement  that  could  only  receive 
those  who  were  like-minded  with  himself.  At  all 
events,  the  important  part  which  he  there  played, 
for  something  like  fourteen  years,  in  connection 
with  the  civil,  religious,  and  educational  interests 
of  the  community,  point  in  this  direction.  As 
one  of  the  four  persons  mentioned  in  the  early 
records  of  the  town  to  whose  name  the  prefix  of 
"  Mr."  was  applied,  Ralph  Wheelock  was  naturally 
looked  up  to,  honored  in  many  ways,  and  enabled 
to  put  into  effective  use  the  knowledge,  abilities, 
and  character  which  he  seems  to  have  possessed 
to  an  unusual  degree. 

As  was  to  have  been  expected  from  the  charac- 
ter and  principles  of  the  thirty  or  more  families 
that  had  settled  in  Dedham  up  to  the  year  1637-8, 
the  organization  of  a  church  was  one  of  the  first 
things  to  be  considered  by  them.  Indeed,  it  was 
for  the  very  purpose  of  uniting  themselves  to- 
gether and  worshiping  God  in  churches,  after 
what  they  believed  to  be  the  New  Testament 
order,  that  they  had  crossed  the  sea  and  planted 
themselves  in  the  new  country.  Accordingly,  a 
weekly  meeting  was  established  in  the  year  1637, 
which  was  successively  held  in  the  several  homes 
of  the  town,  and  led  in  turn  by  the  head  of  the 


18  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

house  where  the  meeting  was  appointed.  Each 
meeting  was  begun  and  concluded  with  prayer, 
and  some  question  was  taken  up  and  considered 
that  was  of  special  interest  to  the  body.  After 
several  months  had  passed  in  the  discussion,  at 
such  meetings,  of  questions  which  appertained 
to  the  constitution  of  a  church,  to  fitness  for 
church  membership,  to  the  proper  dispensing  of 
the  ordinances,-  to  duties  of  brotherly  love,  and  so 
on,  Mr.  John  Allin,  a  graduate  of  Cambridge  (who 
had  settled  in  Dedham  in  1637,  at  the  invitation 
of  the  entire  body  of  citizens,  with  a  view  to  his 
looking  after  their  spiritual  interests),  set  about 
the  work  of  organizing  the  much-talked-of  church. 
In  the  history  which  he  wrote  of  the  beginnings 
of  the  First  Church  in  Dedham,  he  informs  us 
that  his  first  act  was  to  commit  the  case  to  Mr. 
Wheelock,  that  he  might  obtain  his  assistance  in 
determining  whether  the  Lord,  upon  opening  up 
their  spiritual  conditions,  would  so  far  unite  their 
hearts  that  they  two  should  agree  upon  a  third 
person  as  being  worthy  to  enter  into  fellowship 
with  them,  with  a  view  to  the  three  agreeing  upon 
a  fourth,  and  so  on,  until  a  sufficient  number  might 
be  found  to  organize  the  desired  church.  Of  the 
difficulty  which  those  two  Cambridge  graduates 
had  in  finding  eight  persons  in  that  select  body  of 
good  people  whom  they  could  conscientiously  ac- 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  19 

cept  as  being  in  every  respect  worthy  to  be  the 
nucleus  of  a  church,  of  the  grounds  of  objection 
which  they  and  the  first  four  of  the  elect  felt 
obliged  to  interpose  to  the  immediate  acceptance 
of  others ;  and  of  the  preliminary  steps,  such  as 
heart-searchings,  fastings,  and  special  meetings 
for  prayer,  which  finally  led  up,  in  September, 
1638,  to  the  actual  formation  of  a  church  of  eight 
members, —  of  all  these  things  time  would  fail  in 
the  telling,  although  the  story,  as  penned  by  Mr. 
Allin,  is  a  most  interesting  one,  and  might  possibly 
suggest  some  wholesome  lessons  to  church  organ- 
izers in  this  hurrying  period  of  the  world's  history. 
Neither  is  there  space  to  dwell  upon  the  setting 
apart  of  John  Hunting  to  the  eldership,  nor  to  the 
ordination  of  John  Allin,  and  his  installation  as 
the  first  pastor  of  that  carefully  chosen  body  of 
Puritan  saints.  It  is  enough  for  the  purpose 
of  this  paper  that  throughout  all  of  those  mo- 
mentous proceedings  Ralph  Wheelock  was  the 
right  hand  man  of  Mr.  Allin,  and  that  he  bore  a 
conspicuous  part,  by  the  laying  on  of  his  hands, 
in  the  ordination  services,  which  gave  to  the  new 
ecclesiastical  organization  the  two  chief  officers 
which  the  good  people  of  Dedham  believed  to  be 
necessary  for  the  official  equipment  of  a  true 
church  of  Christ.  Laboring  in  perfect  agreement 
with  his  fellow  alumnus  of  old  Cambridge,  al- 


20  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

though  Mr.  Allin,  and  not  himself,  was  the  choice 
of  the  people  for  the  honorable  office  which  he 
was  helping  to  fill ;  acting,  too,  in  the  interest  of 
the  purity  of  the  church,  as  against  the  admission 
of  some  who,  as  we  may  well  believe,  may  have 
been  tempted  to  take  offense  at  his  action  against 
them ;  and  also  maintaining,  during  all  those 
months  of  anxiety,  a  prayerful  and  serene  spirit, 
which  qualified  him  for  the  solemn  duties  which 
he  was  appointed  to  discharge  in  the  ordination 
services,  Mr.  Wheelock  commends  himself  to  us 
as  a  man  of  strong  character,  of  deep  religious 
feeling,  of  pleasing  tactfulness,  and  hence  as  one 
to  whom  his  fellow  citizens  would  naturally  have 
turned  to  fill  their  places  of  trust  and  responsi- 
bility. And  the  Dedham  records  show  us  that 
they  did  turn  to  him  and  repose  the  largest  confi- 
dence in  his  character  and  judgment.  A  record 
under  the  date  of  December,  1639,  reads  as  fol- 
lows: "  Whereas  ye  wholl  towne  weare  warned 
to  meete  together  this  Daye  to  make  choyce  of 
neue  men  for  ye  ordering  of  the  Towne  affayers 
according  unto  a  Courte  Order  in  that  behalf, 
The  greatest  pte  of  ye  Inhabiting  townsmen 
being  assembled  accordingly  made  choyce  as  Fol- 
loweth,  viz.  Mr.  Raffe  Whelocke,  John  Kings- 
bury,  John  Luson,  John  Bacheler,  John  Haward, 
Eleazer  Lusher,  John  Dwite,  Robert  Hinsdell." 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  21 

At  that  meeting  it  was  also  voted  that  whatever 
power  the  whole  town  had,  when  acting  together, 
should  be  put  into  the  hands  of  these  eight  per- 
sons, for  the  term  of  one  year;  which  act  was 
certainly  an  indication  of  the  confidence  which 
the  town  had  in  their  first  selectman.  In  addition 
to  the  duties  which  this  appointment  required  to 
be  performed  in  conjunction  with  his  seven  asso- 
ciates, and  they  could  have  been  neither  few  nor 
small  in  the  development  of  that  new  community, 
Ralph  Wheelock  had  other  duties  laid  upon  him, 
from  time  to  time,  for  which  his  collegiate  train- 
ing had  well  fitted  him.  For  instance,  he  was 
appointed  to  assist  the  measurer  in  laying  out  the 
town ;  in  1642  was  appointed  by  the  General 
Court  clerk  of  writs  and  one  of  the  commissioners 
to  end  small  causes  in  Dedham ;  and  in  1645  was 
authorized  to  solemnize  marriages,  which  pleas- 
ant privilege  at  that  time,  as  will  be  remembered, 
was  one  that  belonged  to  the  civil  officer  rather 
than  to  the  minister  of  the  gospel.  He  was  also 
deputed,  with  two  others,  "  to  make  a  rate  for 
charges  about  ye  meting  house  and  other  charges 
annexed  thereunto.'*  When  we  take  all  these 
duties  into  consideration,  and  remember  that  Mr. 
Wheelock  was  a  land  owner,  and  was  probably  de- 
pendent for  his  living,  to  a  large  extent  at  least, 
upon  the  products  of  his  estate,  we  must  conclude 


22  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

that  those  first  years  of  his  life  in  the  settlement 
at  Dedham  must  have  been  very  busy  ones,  as 
well  as  greatly  serviceable  to  his  fellow  towns- 
men. 

But  we  have  now  only  reached  that  point  in  his 
life  where  his  influence  began  to  be  felt  to  a 
degree  that  has  proved  itself  to  have  been  of  a 
most  impressive  and  far-reaching  nature  ;  a  point 
which  was  not  only  important  in  his  life,  but 
which  must  also  be  conceded  to  have  marked  the 
beginning  of  a  new  order  of  things  in  Massa- 
chusetts history,  if  not  in  a  still  wider  field. 
The  point  of  time  referred  to  was  the  first  day 
of  February,  1644.  On  that  memorable  day  forty- 
one  males  of  Dedham  met  together  in  town 
meeting  and  took  the  following  recorded  action : 
"  The  Inhabitants  taking  into  Consideration  the 
great  necessitie  of  providing  some  means  for  the 
Education  of  the  youth  of  sd  Towne  did  with  an 
unanimous  consent  declare  by  voate  their  willing- 
ness to  promote  that  worke  promising  to  put  too 
their  hands  to  provide  maintenance  for  a  Free 
School  in  our  said  Towne,  and  farther  resolve  and 
consent  testifying  it  by  voate  to  rayse  the  sume  of 
Twenty  pounds  <p  annu  ;  towards  the  maintaining 
of  a  schoole  Mr  to  keep  a  free  school  in  our  sd 
Towne.  And  also  did  resolve  and  consent  to  be- 
trust  the  sd  2o£  per  annu  &  certaine  lands  in  sd 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  23 

Towne,  formerly  set  apart  for  publique  use,  into 
the  hand  of  the  feofees,  to  be  presently  chosen 
by  themselves,  to  imploy  the  sd  2o£  and  the 
land  afores'd,  to  be  improved  for  the  use  of  said 
schoole:  that  as  the  profits  shall  arise  from  the 
said  land,  every  man  may  be  proportionally 
abated  of  his  some  of  the  sd  2o£  aforesaid.  And 
that  the  said  feofees  shall  have  the  power  to 
make  a  rate  for  the  necessary  charge  of  improv- 
ing the  said  land,  they  giving  account  thereof 
to  the  Towne,  or  to  those  whom  they  should 
depute."  The  school  which,  in  accordance  with 
the  foregoing  enactments,  was  established  in 
Dedham,  in  1644,  is  declared  on  good  authority 
to  have  been  the  very  first  free  school  supported 
by  a  town  tax  that  was  opened  in  Massachusetts. 
It  is  true  that  the  Massachusetts  law  of  1642 
required  that  schools  should  be  established  in 
every  town.  But  it  left  them  to  be  sustained  by 
tuition  fees,  or  in  such  other  ways  as  the  towns 
might  choose.  The  first  enactment  of  that  State 
"charging  that  each  municipality"  should  "have 
a  schoolmaster  set  up  "  was  passed  in  1662,  and 
fifteen  years  later  was  made  obligatory  on  all 
places  of  fifty  families.  Plymouth's  school,  which 
was  started  in  1672,  is  claimed  to  have  been  the 
first  free  school  that  was  established  by  law.  Dor- 
chester, indeed,  had  appropriated,  as  early  as 


24  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

1639,  the  rentage  of  Thomson's  Island,  which  had 
been  granted  the  town  by  the  General  Court  sev- 
eral years  before  for  the  maintenance  of  a  school. 
But  notwithstanding  all  this,  what  has  been  be- 
fore asserted  is  doubtless  true,  that  in  their  enact- 
ments of  1644,  whereby  the  sum  of  2o£  and  the 
profits  of  certain  public  lands  were  appropriated 
by  vote  for  the  support  of  a  free  school,  the 
freemen  of  Dedham  did  inaugurate  in  Massa- 
chusetts a  new  system  for  the  education  of  her 
children,  a  system  the  wisdom  of  which  has  been 
demonstrated  by  the  more  than  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  of  her  experience  along  the  general 
lines  which  were  marked  out  by  those  forty-one 
Puritan  settlers  of  Dedham.  The  surnames  of 
some  of  those  two  score  and  one  pioneers  have 
come  down  to  us  in  very  distinguished  associa- 
tions. Our  Ralph  Wheelock  was  at  that  memo- 
rable town  meeting,  and  he  was  the  ancestor  of 
the  first  two  presidents  of  Dartmouth  College. 
John  Dwight  was  there,  and  he  was  the  ancestor 
of  the  two  Timothy  Dwights,  so  well  known  as 
the  able  presidents  of  Yale  College.  Richard 
Evered  was  one  of  the  forty-one  attendants  at  the 
meeting,  and  he  was  the  ancestor  of  President 
Edward  Everett,  of  Harvard  College.  Anthony 
Fisher  was  also  there,  and  he  was  the  ancestor  of 
the  renowned  statesman  and  friend  of  Washing- 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  25 

ton,  Fisher  Ames,  who  declined  the  presidency 
of  Harvard  College  in  1804,  after  he  had  been 
elected  to  that  office.  And  the  ancestor  of  the 
two  governors  Fairbanks,  of  Vermont,  was  pres- 
ent, to  give  his  vote  in  favor  of  the  free  school. 
A  notable  company  that  truly  was,  if  what  they 
did  at  the  meeting  and  the  honor  which  has  been 
reflected  back  upon  them  by  a  distinguished 
posterity  be  taken  into  consideration.  Surely 
their  names,  as  well  as  their  act,  are  worthy  of 
being  handed  down  to  the  remotest  generations, 
and  to  be  forever  associated  with  the  beneficent 
free  school  system,  under  which  our  country  has 
made  such  remarkable  progress  in  everything 
that  makes  for  the  enlightenment  of  a  free  people. 
But  the  establishment  of  that  free  school  in 
Dedham  has  an  additional  interest  for  those  who 
care  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  Mr.  Wheelock  ; 
for  the  tradition  has  come  down  to  us  that  he  was 
the  first  teacher  of  that  now  famous  school.  The 
tradition,  moreover,  is  so  well  supported  by  two 
or  three  facts  of  a  confirmative  nature  that  we 
have  no  good  reason  for  doubting  that  from  1644 
until  1651,  the  date  of  his  leaving  Dedham,  he  did 
instruct  the  children  of  that  goodly  town  in  the 
school  which  his  wisdom  had  helped  to  establish. 
The  facts  referred  to  are  these :  that  during  the 
seven  years  between  1644  and  1651  Mr.  Whee- 
4 


26  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

lock's  name  is  not  associated  in  the  records  with 
other  important  matters,  as  it  had  been  during 
the  previous  years;  that  we  have  the  definite 
statement  in  the  record  of  Dec.  12,  1648,  that 
when  the  selectmen  of  the  town  were  consider- 
ing" the  plan  of  a  schoolhouse,  his  "  motion  for  ad- 
vice was  answered,"  as  if  he,  the  schoolmaster, 
were  taking  an  important  part  in  the  furtherance 
of  the  projected  enterprise  of  erecting  a  new 
school  building ;  and  that  he  is  certainly  known 
to  have  taught  school  afterwards  in  the  new  town 
of  Medfield.  These  three  facts  would  seem  to 
amply  support  the  tradition,  and  therefore  to 
justify  the  belief  that  Ralph  Wheelock  taught  the 
first  free  school  in  Massachusetts,  and  one  of  the 
first  in  New  England,  that  was  supported  directly 
by  a  town  tax.  In  cherishing  this  belief  poster- 
ity may  well  assign  him  the  added  honor  of  hav- 
ing been  the  teacher  of  certain  ancestors  of  a 
most  remarkable  group  of  teachers,  and  hence 
the  possible,  to  say  the  least,  the  possible  source 
of  an  hereditary  bias,  which  worked  itself  out  in 
pedagogic  lines  in  succeeding  generations,  to  a 
wonderful  extent.  If  it  was  the  case,  as  doubt- 
less it  was,  that  Mr.  Wheelock  taught  his  own 
son,  Eleazer,  with  the  rest  of  the  children  there 
in  Dedham,  and  taught  young  Timothy,  the  son 
of  John  Dwight,  who  was  then  of  the  right  age  to 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  27 

attend  school,  and  also  taught  the  son  of  Richard 
Evered,  from  whom  Edward  Everett  was  de- 
scended ;  then  he  had  in  his  school  the  ancestors 
of  at  least  five  college  presidents  who  have  made 
their  impress  upon  three  of  our  New  England  col- 
leges, and  hence  upon  thousands  of  the  bright 
young  men  of  our  beloved  land.  The  fact  that  a 
bias  towards  the  teaching  function  actually  had 
its  beginning  in  him,  which  was  propagated  in 
four  of  his  own  descendants,  of  two  or  three  fol- 
lowing generations,  who  were  teachers  of  more  or 
less  note,  argues  strongly  in  favor  of  the  supposi- 
tion before  stated,  that,  through  his  peculiar  fit- 
ness for  the  work  which  was  laid  upon  him  in 
Dedham,  he  did  set  in  motion  a  wide  current  of 
pedagogic  influence  which  afterwards  worked  it- 
self into  the  admirable  instruction  of  the  five  col- 
lege presidents  whose  names  add  luster  to  the 
reputation  of  three  of  our  New  England  colleges. 
However  this  may  have  been,  there  seems  to  be 
no  ground  for  doubting  the  wisdom  of  his  choice 
of  the  profession  of  a  teacher,  instead  of  follow- 
ing that  calling  which  was  so  overcrowded  when 
he  came  to  Massachusetts.  And  just  here,  in  the 
consciousness  which  he  may  have  had  of  his  sin- 
gular fitness  for  the  work  of  the  teacher,  may  per- 
haps be  seen  the  determining  cause  for  his  refus- 
ing to  accept  the  offer  of  pastorates  when  he  was 


28  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

called  to  them.  He  was  a  born  teacher,  and  a 
teacher  of  youth  he  would  be  whenever  the  op- 
portunity came  to  him. 

We  have  already  seen  how  important  was  the 
part  which  Mr.  Wheelock  took  in  the  affairs  of 
Dedham  during  the  earlier  years  of  its  history. 
We  now  turn  to  another  chapter  of  his  life,  which 
we  find  in  connection  with  the  formation  of  a 
new  town.  As  early  as  the  year  1649  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Dedham  began  to  consider  the  matter  of 
making  a  new  township  out  of  a  part  of  their 
superabundant  territory,  which  then  embraced 
what  are  now  known  as  the  towns  of  Dedham, 
Norwood,  Walpole,  Norfolk,  Wrentham,  Franklin, 
Bellingham,  Medfield,  Dover,  Needham,  Welles- 
ley,  and  parts  of  Natick  and  Hyde  Park.  As  it 
was  then  necessary  for  the  residents  of  a  place 
to  have  their  houses  grouped  together  in  order  to 
secure  protection  from  the  depredations  of  the 
Indians,  there  was  only  one  way  in  which  a  town 
could  make  any  general  use  of  its  outlying  landed 
possessions,  and  that  was  the  forming,  or  sanc- 
tioning the  formation,  of  colonies,  and  sending 
them  out  to  occupy  a  portion  of  its  virgin  soil. 
And  this  is  precisely  what  the  town  of  Dedham 
did,  with  Ralph  Wheelock  as  the  leader  of  the 
first  movement  in  this  direction.  In  November, 
1649,  to  him  and  six  others  was  committed  by  the 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  29 

freemen  of  Dedham  the  duty  of  "  erecting,  dis- 
posing, and  government  of  "  a  new  village  until 
there  was  such  a  company  of  men  engaged  in 
that  plantation  and  associated  together  as  the 
town  of  Dedham  judged  "  meet  for  that  work  and 
trust."  This  body  of  seven  men  acted  in  behalf 
of  the  parent  town  for  fifteen  months,  until  May, 
1651,  when  the  new  town  of  Medfield  was  granted 
the  usual  full  powers  of  an  independent  town  by 
the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts.  Three  of 
the  seven,  Mr.  Wheelock,  Thomas  Wight,  and 
Robert  Hinsdale,  left  Dedham  with  the  colonists, 
but  the  others,  John  Dwight  among  them,  re- 
mained in  the  mother  settlement.  As  it  had  been 
at  the  laying  of  the  foundations  of  Dedham,  so  it 
now  was  at  Medfield, —  an  instrument  was  drawn 
up  for  all  to  sign  who  desired  to  be  accepted  as 
inhabitants  of  the  colony.  This  instrument  was 
called  "  An  Agreement,"  concerning  which  Til- 
den,  the  historian  of  Medfield,  says :  "Its  author 
is  not  certainly  known ;  but  there  is  little  doubt 
that  it  was  chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  the  work  of 
Ralph  Wheelock,  who  has  very  properly  been 
styled  '  the  founder  of  Medfield.' '  The  agree- 
ment is  too  long  to  be  incorporated  entire  in  this 
paper,  but  the  last  two  of  the  three  "  resolves  " 
which  follow  the  preamble  are  of  sufficient  inter- 
est to  merit  our  attention,  since  they  are  indica- 


30  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

tive  of  the  spirit  of  the  man  who  prepared  them, 
as  well  as  of  the  temper  of  the  colonists  who 
affixed  their  names  to  the  instrument.  The  fol- 
lowing are  the  second  and  third  resolves :  "  That 
if  differences,  questions,  or  contentions  shall  fall 
out,  or  arise,  any  manner  of  ways  in  our  societie, 
or  betwixt  any  parties  therein,  that  they  shall 
really  endeavor  to  resolve  and  issue  the  same  in 
the  most  peaceable  ways  &  manner,  by  refference, 
Arbitration,  or  some  other  the  like  means  before 
it  shall  com  to  any  place  of  publicke  Judicature, 
except  it  be  in  our  own  Towne.  That  we  shall 
all  of  us  in  the  said  Towne  faithfully  endeavor 
that  only  such  be  receaved  to  our  societie  & 
Township  as  we  may  have  sufficient  satisfaction 
in,  that  they  ar  honest,  peaceable,  &  free  from 
scandal  and  erroneous  opinnions."  Thus  was 
every  possible  precaution  taken  to  secure  for  the 
new  town  only  such  settlers  as  would  be  willing  to 
labor  for  the  welfare  and  good  name  of  the  com- 
munity ;  a  precaution  which  did  actually  result  in 
gathering  together  a  choice  body  of  inhabitants, 
and  in  the  formation  of  another  settlement  of  the 
Dedham  type,  which  was  the  forty-third  town  in 
the  colony  in  the  order  of  incorporation.  Within 
a  very  few  months  after  the  incorporation  of  the 
town,  Mr.  John  Wilson,  a  graduate  of  Harvard 
College,  and  a  son-in-law  of  Rev.  Thomas  Hooker 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  31 

of  Hartford,  commenced  his  labors  in  Medfield 
as  pastor  of  its  church,  Mr.  Wheelock  probably 
thinking  that  he  could  be  of  greater  service  to 
the  community  in  the  performance  of  other  duties 
than  those  which  appertained  to  the  calling  of 
the  minister.  During  the  first  four  years  of  Med- 
field's  history,  and  for  a  single  year  at  a  subse- 
quent period,  he  was  one  of  the  town's  selectmen. 
He  was  made  a  magistrate,  was  commissioned  to 
perform  the  marriage  ceremony,  and,  in  1656, 
married  the  first  pair  who  were  united  in  Med- 
field. In  1653  he  was  chosen  to  take  up  a  collec- 
tion for  Harvard  College,  to  which  institution, 
more  than  twenty  years  later,  he,  with  threescore 
others,  is  credited  with  having  made  another  con- 
tribution. He  was  also  sent  by  his  fellow-towns- 
men to  Boston,  for  the  years  1663,  '64,  '66,  and  '67, 
as  a  deputy  to  the  Great  and  General  Court,  thus 
rounding  out  his  service  to  the  town  in  a  way 
which  bore  testimony  to  the  high  esteem  in  which 
he  was  held  by  the  community  at  large.  That 
he  was  called  upon  to  represent  Medfield  during 
those  four  particular  years,  when  the  Massachu- 
setts Bay  Colony  was  greatly  disturbed  over  the 
effort  which  Charles  the  Second  was  making  to 
limit  its  independence,  would  seem  to  clearly 
point  to  the  special  confidence  which  his  fellow- 
citizens  had  in  his  wisdom  as  a  councilor.  But  it 


32  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

seems  to  have  been  his  chief  business  in  Med- 
field,  as  it  had  been  for  seven  years  in  Dedham, 
to  give  instruction  to  the  young.     In   1655  the 
town   voted  .£15  to  establish  "a  schoule  for  the 
education  of  the  children,  to  be  raised  by  a  rate 
according  as  men  have  taken  up  lands,  and  the 
rest  of  the  maintainance  to  be  raised  upon  the 
children  that  goe  to  schoule."     Of  this  school  it  is 
known  that  Mr.  Wheelock  was  the  master,  but 
just  how  long  he  presided  over  it  we  are  unable 
to  say.     From  the  following  record  of  1668 :  "  Mr. 
Wheelock   was  employed   to  keep  a   school  for 
such  of  the  youth  as  should  come  to  him  to  learn 
to  read  and  write,  for  the  salary  of  ten  shillings  a 
week,"  it  is  supposable  that  he  taught  the  school 
from  the  time  of  its  institution  until  he  became  a 
representative  to  the  General  Court,  a  period  of 
eight  years,  and  that,  after  he  had  concluded  his 
labors  in  the  legislature,  he  was  authorized  by 
the  above   town  vote    to  resume   the   work   for 
which  he  had  shown  such  exceptional  fitness,  al- 
though he  was  then  about  sixty-eight  years  old. 
And  it  is  not  improbable,  in  view  of  the  statement 
of  McClure  and  Parish,  that  "  the  residue  of  his 
life  he  passed  in  various  useful  labors,  and  princi- 
pally in  the  instruction  of  youth,"  that  he  actually 
spent  the  fifteen  remaining  years  of  his  life  in 
teaching  the  young  of  Medfield  out  of  his  stores 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  33 

of  knowledge  and  experience.  At  all  events,  the 
picture  of  the  aged  man  gathering  the  children 
about  him  and  giving  them  instruction  until  he 
himself  was  called  upon  to  become  a  learner  in 
the  higher  school  above,  is  a  pleasing  one ;  and  it 
certainly  falls  in  with  the  statement  made  con- 
cerning him,  that  "  he  lived  to  a  good  old  age, 
universally  beloved  and  respected,  and  deceased 
Nov.,  1683,  in  the  84th  year  of  his  age." 

Now  there  are  many  things  that  we  should  be 
glad  to  know  about  this  Puritan  minister,  school- 
master, and  citizen,  concerning  which  we  know 
little  or  nothing.  For  instance,  we  should  be 
pleased  to  know  whether  he  was  short  or  tall,  fat 
or  lean,  blue-eyed  or  black-eyed,  slow  of  speech  or 
impassioned  in  his  delivery  of  sermon,  teaching, 
and  address;  and  all  the  other  characteristics 
which  together  made  up  his  personality,  helped 
determine  the  course  of  his  life  and  made  him, 
what  he  certainly  was,  eminently  useful  to  his 
own  generation,  and  an  influence  to  impress  suc- 
ceeding generations  for  good.  Moreover,  it 
would  greatly  interest  his  posterity  to  know  more 
about  his  wife  than  the  facts  that  her  name  was 
Rebecca  and  that  she  had  to  affix  her  mark, 
instead  of  her  name,  to  the  documents  which  she 
signed  ;  although  such  illiteracy  in  a  woman  was 
the  common  thing  in  those  days,  rather  than  the 


34  •  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

exception  ;  not  a  few  educated  men  holding,  as 
did  John  Milton,  that  their  daughters  were  better 
off  without  an  education.  And  we  should  be 
pleased  to  know  more  about  Mr.  Wheelock's  nine 
children,  concerning  whom  we  have  some  good 
reasons  for  believing  that  they  were  in  general  a 
credit  to  their  estimable  parents.  It  would  also 
gratify  our  curiosity  to  know  why  it  was  that  this 
schoolmaster's  estate,  which  was  rated  at  £274 
los.  in  1652,  soon  after  his  removal  from  Dedham 
to  Medfield,  was  only  worth  £190  in  1660.  Did 
teaching  school  in  those  early  New  England  days 
impoverish  a  man,  as  it  has  been  known  to  do  in 
more  recent  times?  Or  did  Mr.  Wheelock's 
known  interest  in  the  cause  of  education  lead  the 
financial  agents  of  Harvard  College  to  make  an- 
nual visits  to  Medfield,  to  solicit  funds  for  that 
worthy  institution  ?  Or  was  it  the  case  that  other 
claimants  upon  his  sympathies  also  drew  so  heav- 
ily upon  his  resources  that  his  property  shrank 
about  one-third  in  eight  years,  and  he  was  there- 
fore impelled  to  leave  his  favorite  occupation  for 
four  years,  to  eke  out  his  slender  income  through 
the  salary  of  a  legislator  ?  But  we  shall  probably 
have  to  wait  for  the  satisfaction  of  such  pardon- 
able curiosity  until  that  future  when  we  may  be 
permitted  to  see  the  faces,  and  hear  the  voices  of 
those  whom  we  have  only  known  through  the 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  35 

voice  of  tradition  and  the  limited  introduction  of 
the  printed  page. 

However,  there  are  certain  things  of  a  very 
positive  nature  that  grow  out  of  a  study  of  such 
lives  as  the  one  that  has  been  partially  set  forth 
in  this  sketch,  some  of  which  it  may  not  be  un- 
profitable to  emphasize  as  we  bring  our  paper  to 
its  conclusion.  The  first  of  them  is  this,  that  we 
can  never  be  too  grateful  to  Almighty  God  that 
in  His  plans  for  the  settlement  of  this  part  of 
America  "  He  sifted  a  whole  nation,  that  He 
might  send  choice  grain  over  into  this  wilder- 
ness," as  William  Stoughton  put  it  in  1669.  We 
can  never  be  adequately  thankful  for  the  provi- 
dence which  turned  the  tide  of  Puritan  emigra- 
tion towards  our  New  England  shores,  rather 
than  towards  some  other  land,  or  even  towards 
some  other  part  of  our  own  land  where  the  Puri- 
tan character  would  have  had  a  less  favorable 
field  for  its  manifestation,  and  for  the  solving  of 
the  vital  problems  which  it  so  nobly  wrought  out 
for  the  benefit  of  posterity.  After  all  due  credit 
has  been  given  to  the  Pilgrims  for  the  heroic 
work  which  they  accomplished  on  the  bleak 
shores  of  Massachusetts,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  it  was  "the  A rbella  with  its  Puritan  cargo, 
and  not  the  Mayflower  that  brought  to  Massachu- 
setts Bay  the  royal  charter,  which,"  as  some  one 


36  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

has  said,  "  gave  the  guaranties  of  local  self-gov- 
ernment, and  which  may  be  said  to  have  fore- 
shadowed the  future  independence  of  the  people 
of  Massachusetts."  Yes,  and  we  should  remem- 
ber that  it  was  other  ships  which,  later  on, 
brought  over  Puritans  like  John  Harvard, 
Thomas  Shepard,  and  Ralph  Wheelock,  to  give 
an  impetus  to  the  development  of  sound  learning 
in  Massachusetts ;  and  Thomas  Hooker,  John 
Haynes,  Samuel  Stone,  John  Davenport,  and  the 
Batons,  to  lay  splendid  foundations  for  educa- 
tional and  civic  institutions  in  Connecticut ;  and 
a  host  of  other  intelligent  and  able  Puritans  to  do 
the  like  for  other  parts  of  our  dear  New  Eng- 
land. For  such  providential  guidance  the  entire 
nation  has  abundant  reason  for  cherishing  a  spirit 
of  gratitude  towards  Him,  by  whom,  as  we  are 
taught,  the  destinies  of  all  nations  are  directed. 

Of  another  thing  we  may  be  well  assured,  that 
we  cannot  cherish  too  loyally  and  lovingly  the 
memory  of  the  noble  men  who  braved  the  dan- 
gers which  were  incident  to  the  pioneer  work 
that  they  had  to  do  in  this  new  land,  thousands 
of  miles  distant  from  dear  old  England.  Refined, 
as  they  were,  and  fitted  to  enjoy  all  the  high  priv- 
ileges to  which  their  birth  and  position  entitled 
them,  and  unused  to  the  deprivations  and  the 
hard  labors  which  their  new  life  necessitated, 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  37 

their  heroic  bearing  —  sublime  courage,  patience, 
perseverance,  and  industry  —  cannot  but  chal- 
lenge our  admiration  and  win  the  highest  regard 
for  their  memories. 

' '  Here  were  men  (co-equal  with  their  fate) 
Who  did  great  things,  unconscious  they  were  great. " 

Not  to  perpetuate  their  deeds  and  embalm  their 
memories  in  biographic,  historic,  narrative,  and 
poetic  literature ;  and  in  bronze,  marble,  and 
granite,  would  lay  upon  their  posterity  the  charge 
of  having  been  unfaithful  to  their  ancestral  bene- 
factors ;  for  benefactors  those  noble  Puritans 
were  of  all  who  have  inherited  their  names  and 
have  entered  into  the  enjoyment  of  the  privileges 
which,  by  sacrifice,  they  secured  for  unborn 
millions. 

And  one  thing  more  we  know  right  well,  that 
it  belongs  to  those  who  are  justly  proud  of  what 
the  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  fathers  did  to  carry  on 
the  work  which  they  came  across  the  sea  to  do, 
until  it  shall  have  been  completed  ;  until  liberty 
to  worship  according  to  the  dictates  of  the  con- 
science, civil  freedom,  free  education,  and  repre- 
sentative government  shall  have  been  given  to 
all  men  over  whom  our  nation  has  secured  any 
power.  To  refuse  to  do,  at  the  cost  of  compara- 
tively small  sacrifice,  what  the  fathers  did 
through  the  greatest  sacrifices,  would  prove  that 


38  Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan 

we  have  not  truly  cherished  the  fathers'  memo- 
ries, and  that  we  have  degenerated  from  the  high 
ideals  which  they  set  before  themselves,  and 
which,  in  their  heroic  efforts,  they  measurably 
reached.  We  can  best  honor  them  as,  with  faith 
in  their  God,  and  faith  in  ourselves  as  the  ap- 
pointed successors  of  those  early  New  England 
worthies,  we  build  solid  institutions  for  the 
people,  both  religious  and  civic,  wherever  we 
may,  whether  in  America,  on  the  islands  of  the 
sea,  or  on  other  continents  where  our  high 
privileges  have  never  been  enjoyed.  If  a  study 
of  such  lives  as  that  of  Ralph  Wheelock  and  of 
his  Puritan  associates  teaches  us  anything  that 
is  of  real  value  it  certainly  teaches  this  with  an 
irresistible  emphasis.  Hence  the  American  peo- 
ple might  well  adopt  as  their  own  the  language  of 
a  modern  poet,  and  say  from  the  heart :  — 

"  Our  fathers  tamed  the  wilderness 
And  wrested  from  the  sullen  earth 
Its  largess,  and  with  power  and  worth 
And  full  faith  in  the  future  wrought 
With  might  of  deed  and  might  of  thought. 
No  sluggards  they,  with  craven  fears  ; 
They  faced  with  high,  undaunted  hearts 
The  stern  front  of  the  coming  years. 

'  •  We  will  not  shame  our  history, 
We  will  not  falter  on  the  road 


Ralph  Wheelock,  Puritan  39 

Appointed  by  the  Most  High  God  ; 
'Twas  He  who  held  us  by  the  hand, 
And  led  us  to  the  light  of  day  — 
'Twas  he  who  made  our  eyes  to  see, 
And  oped  our  minds  to  understand 
The  blessed  creed  of  liberty. 

"  We  may  not  pause,  we  may  not  wait 
And  lie  beside  the  sheaf  and  vine 
Content  with  sordid  bread  and  wine. 
We  have  but  climbed  the  lower  slope, 
And  far  above  us  and  beyond 
The  summits  tower  in  the  sky 
Whence  we  may  view  the  glorious  scope, 
And  prospect  of  our  destiny." 

LEWIS  WILDER  HICKS. 


APPENDIX. 


I  HE  foregoing  address  by  the  Rev.  Lewis 
W.  Hicks,  which  so  ably  portrays  the 
noble  character  of  our  ancestor,  and 
which  so  clearly  and  satisfactorily  shows  the  be- 
neficence of  Ralph  Wheelock's  influence  as  an 
educator  of  youth  and  counselor  in  religious  and 
public  affairs  (the  rich  fruitage  of  which  has  been 
descending  to  succeeding  generations),  has  led  to 
the  suggestion  that  Mr.  Hicks's  facts  might  well 
be  supplemented  by  other  matters  relative  to  the 
Wheelock  family  that  could  not  appropriately  ap- 
pear in  the  address  before  the  Historical  Society, 
but  might  be  included  in  this  publication,  as  an 
appendix.  Of  the  writer,  who  has  made  some  re- 
search in  the  records  which  touch  upon  the  life  of 
the  Wheelocks,  both  in  Old  England  and  New 
England,  a  request  was  made  that  he  should  con- 
tribute, in  some  measure,  such  matter  as  might 
prove  interesting  to  living  descendants  of  Ralph 
Wheelock.  Accordingly,  the  following  is  cheer- 
fully contributed  to  this  end. 
The  genealogy  of  Ralph  Wheelock  is  obscure. 
6  (41) 


42  Appendix 

Apparently  no  successful  effort  has  been  made  to 
trace  it.  That  he  came  from  Shropshire  County, 
England,  a  county  lying  just  south  of  Cheshire 
county,  in  which  there  is  still  a  town,  or  parish, 
known  as  "  Wheelock,"  is  certain.  To  that  part 
of  England  we  should  therefore  naturally  look 
for  the  origin  of  the  family.  In  "  Ormerod's  His- 
tory of  Cheshire"  the  name  of  "Whelok"  ap- 
pears as  of  the  time  and  reign  of  Henry  II,  about 
the  year  1200  A.  D.  The  book  records  the  name 
as  "  de  Quelok,"  "  de  Whelok,"  and  "  Wheelock," 
and  recites  that  "  Roger  Main  waring  released 
to  Hugh  de  Whelok  all  his  claim  to  the  village  of 
Whelok,  which  he  (the  said  Hugh)  held  of  Rich- 
ard de  Moston  his  knight ;  "  and  "  not  long  after, 
Adam  de  Whelok  gave  to  his  brother  Hugh  all 
his  right  to  this  place  —  and  1285,  Thomas  de 
Whelok  bought  the  lands  of  Randle,  son  of  Nico- 
las de  Blackwood."  "Thomas  de  Whelok  of 
Whelok  had  letters  of  exemption  from  service  on 
juries,  perhaps  for  military  services;  and  same 
year,  had  Letters  of  Protection  on  his  departure 
for  Ireland  in  the  train  of  Robert  de  Vere,  duke 
of  Ireland."  Wm.  Venables  of  Kinderton  brought 
two  writs  against  Adam,  son  of  Adam  de  Bostock 
and  others,  for  taking  away  the  body  of  Richard, 
son  of  John,  son  of  Thomas  de  Whelok,  and  the 
custody  of  1 6  mess.  &c.  (i  mill,  and  452  acres), 


Appendix  43 

which  John  held  of  him  by  knight's  service,  ever 
since  which  time  the  Wheloks  were  under  lords 
hereof,  till  Thomas,  son  of  Richard  de  Whelok 
died  s.  p.  1439,  at  which  time  Agnes,  wife  of 
Richard  de  Leversage,  but  daughter  to  Elizabeth, 
sister  to  John,  father  of  Richard  de  Whelok 
above  mentioned,  was  found  the  cousin  and  next 
heir."  Ormerod  further  recites  that  "  the  son  of 
this  Thomas  de  Quelok,  viz.  Thomas  de  Quelok, 
occurs  as  one  of  the  lessees  of  the  town  of  Middle- 
wich,  as  Thomas  de  Quelok  purveyor  to  the  King 
in  the  hundred  of  North wich  in  a  recog.  in  iocs 
to  bring  "  to  Chester  within  a  certain  day,  all  the 
corn  and  bacon  charged  upon  the  said  Hundred/  " 
etc.  Furthermore,  it  is  stated  that  "  Thomas  de 
Whelok  and  Julian  his  wife,  then  obtained  from 
Ralph  de  Hassale,  chaplain,  the  manor  of  Whelok 
for  life ;  remainder  to  Thomas  his  son  and  Alice 
his  wife,  and  their  heirs  forever."  The  name  of 
Thomas  again  occurs  as  one  who  had  been  ap- 
pointed collector  of  a  subsidy ;  and  still  again  as 
lord  of  Whelok  Manor.  The  village  or  Manor  of 
Whelok  appears  to  have  passed  into  possession  of 
the  Leversage  family  about  1438-9.  The  Whee- 
locks  who  thus  early  became  extinct,  as  a  family, 
in  the  township  which  was  called  by  their  name, 
were  probably  survived  by  lines  of  yeomanry 
bearing  the  same  name,  who  were  settled  in  Bee- 


44  Appendix 

ton  and  Hassall,  where  the  parent  house  held 
lands ;  and  later  on  were  widely  scattered  through 
the  counties  of  Cheshire,  Shropshire,  and  else- 
where. And  there  can  be  no  reasonable  ground 
for  doubting  that  it  was  from  some  one  of  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Hugh  de  Whelok,  mentioned 
above,  that  Ralph  Wheelock  was  descended.  In- 
deed, it  is  the  opinion  of  the  writer  that  his  an- 
cestry could  readily  be  traced  to  the  Wheelocks 
of  "  Wheelock,"  Cheshire  County,  by  reference  to 
the  records  of  Becton  and  Hassall,  England, — 
records  which  are  not  obtainable  in  this  country ; 
and  it  is  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Hicks  that  the  records 
of  Whitchurch,  in  northern  Shropshire,  the  birth- 
place of  Abraham  Wheelock,  would  throw  still 
further  light  upon  his  later  ancestry.  It  may  be 
added  in  this  connection  that  ^the  village  of 
Wheelock  was,  in  1873,  a  distinct  parish,  and  that 
the  living  was  accounted  a  vicarage,  in  the  gift 
of  the  rector  of  Sandback.  The  population  of  the 
village  then  numbered  2,146. 

It  appears  from  Booth's  "  Pedigree  and  Dug- 
dale's  Visitation,"  1663-4,  that  the  "  Arms  of 
Wheelock "  were  of  the  following  description : 
"Argent,  a  chevron  between  three  Catherine  wheels 
Sable"  (See  cut  in  this  book,  which  was  taken 
from  Ormerod's  Cheshire.)  "  Burke's  Encyclopae- 
dia of  Heraldry  "  gives  but  one  Wheelock  coat-of- 


Appendix  45 

arms,  and  describes  it  precisely  as  above,  placing 
the  family  in  Wheelock  county,  Chester,  the 
county  that  was  formerly  known  as  Cheshire.  It 
may  be  of  interest  to  know  that  the  "  Leversage 
of  Wheelock"  coat-of-arms  is  thus  described  in 
"  The  Visitation  of  Chester,"  1580:  —  ^  Arms- 
Quarterly —  i  and  ^  Argent,  a  chevron  between 
three  ploughshares  Sable.  2  and 3.  Argent,  a  chev- 
ron between  three  Catherine  wheels  Sable.  {Whee- 
lock^ Crest. —  a  leopard's  head  jessant-de-lis  Or." 
From  this  it  would  appear  that,  after  the  mar- 
riage of  Agnes  Whelock  to  Richard  de  Lever- 
sage,  the  Wheelock  arms  were  incorporated  with 
those  of  the  Leversages.  But,  from  the  quota- 
tions made  above,  from  Booth  and  Burke,  it  is 
evident  that  there  were  Wheelocks  of  later  times, 
who  were  still  entitled  to  the  distinctive  arms  of 
the  Wheelock  family,  as  illustrated  in  our  cut. 

As  no  mention  has  been  discovered  of  any 
other  of  the  name  of  Ralph  Wheelock  as  having 
emigrated  to  America  from  England,  and  three 
credible  authorities  declare  that  the  one  who  set- 
tled in  Dedham  was  he  who  was  born  in  Shrop- 
shire County,  England,  we  may  therefore  safely 
affirm  that  this  man  was  indeed  the  ancestor  of 
the  Wheelock  family  in  this  country,  which  has 
now  become  a  multitude  in  number  and  is  widely 
scattered  over  the  land.  They  may  not  reach 


46  Appendix 

"  from  Maine  to  Georgia/'  but  certainly  do  reach 
from  Vermont  to  Nebraska,  and  even  to  Califor- 
nia, as  the  recent  departure  of  Benjamin  Ide 
Wheeler,  a  lineal  descendant  of  Ralph  Wheelock, 
to  assume  the  presidency  of  the  University  of 
California,  will  clearly  show.  It  may  be  added 
that  a  town  of  "  Wheelock,"  in  Vermont,  is  in- 
dexed in  the  United  States  Post-Office  Directory, 
and  that  Nebraska  also  has  a  town  of  the  same 
name.  There  are  also  descendants  of  Ralph 
Wheelock  in  North  and  South  Dakota,  Texas, 
New  Mexico,  and  Colorado ;  Senator  Edward  O. 
Wolcott,  of  the  latter  state,  being  one  of  the 
number. 

All  of  this  vast  multitude  have  sprung  from 
Mr.  Wheelock's  nine  children,  whose  names  were 
as  follows :  Gershom,  Mary,  Benjamin,  Samuel, 
Peregrine,  Rebecca,  Record,  Experience,  and  Ele- 
azer,  most  of  whom,  if  not  all,  were  married  and 
raised  large  families ;  and  their  descendants  of 
the  early  New  England  days  multiplied  rapidly, 
eight  or  ten  children  being  the  average  allotment 
to  each  family, —  an  indication  of  the  great  vital- 
ity of  the  stock,  of  which  we  have  further  proof  in 
the  pronounced  longevity  to  which,  as  the  records 
show,  many  attained,  even  to  fourscore  and  more 
years.  The  starting-point  of  this  great  multitude, 
after  Dedham,  Massachusetts,  was  in  Medfield. 


Appendix  47 

In  Tilden's  History  of  this  town  it  is  related  that 
Ralph  Wheelock's  house-lot  was  the  first  granted 
in  that  town,  and  was  at  the  corner  of  Main  and 
North  streets,  the  site  lately  owned  by  Elijah 
Thayer.  There  were  twelve  acres  in  his  lot. 
His  house,  which  was  built  in  1651-52,  stood  on 
the  north  side  of  Main  street.  From  that  historic 
spot  the  children  went  out  to  settle  in.  Medfield, 
Mendon,  Dedham,  Uxbridge,  Shrewsbury,  Reho- 
both,  and  adjoining  regions,  many  of  them  be- 
coming large  land-owners  and  acquiring  positions 
of  prominence  in  the  affairs  of  the  towns.  By 
reference  to  Ward's  History  of  Shrewsbury,  Til- 
den's  History  of  Medfield,  Ballou's  History  of 
Milford,  and  the  records  of  the  towns  of  Dedham, 
Grafton,  Mendon,  and  Uxbridge,  it  will  be  found 
that  many  Wheelocks  of  character  have  appeared, 
who  were  prominent  in  the  early  days  of  New 
England,  in  town,  State,  and  national  affairs; 
and  who,  in  council,  good  works,  and  exemplary 
lives,  have  left  behind  them  a  reputation  and 
influence  for  good  which  ever  continues. 

Perhaps  in  nothing  has  the  family  been  more 
prominent  during  these  many  generations  than  in 
its  teaching  capacity.  Each  succeeding  genera- 
tion has  furnished  many  able  teachers  who  have 
apparently  inherited  the  gift  or  talent  of  Ralph 
Wheelock,  and  many  of  the  present  generation 


48  Appendix 

have  chosen  teaching  for  their  vocation  and  life- 
work.     Eleazer  Wheelock,  known  in  his  day  as 
"  Master  Wheelock,"  a  grandson  of  Ralph,  taught 
from    1756  to   1775,   and    lived   on  the  original 
homestead,  the  house  of  which  was  not  torn  down 
until  1780.     It  was  to  a  nephew  of  Master  Whee- 
lock's  wife,  Simeon  Plimpton  by  name,  that  the 
estate  was  given.     Joseph   Wheelock,   a  son  of 
Ephraim,  kept  school   in    1736,  was  a  selectman 
from    1767    to    1774,   and  owned    various   lands. 
Perhaps  the  most   prominent  in  the  profession 
was  Rev.  Eleazer  Wheelock,  the  first  president  of 
Dartmouth  College,  of  whom  it  has  been  written : 
"  His  friends  cherished  the  most  cordial  affection 
and  profound  veneration.     He  will  be  tenderly 
remembered  while  any  are  alive  who  ever  knew 
him.     His  services  will  be  gratefully  recollected 
while  civilization,  science,  and  religion  are  dear 
to  man."     He  is  spoken  of  as  one  who,  "  by  the 
gospel,  subdued  the  ferocity  of  the  savage,  and  to 
the  civilized    opened  new  pastures  of    science. 
He  was  a  man  of  profound  science  and  a  fine 
classical  scholar."      His   mantle   seems  to  have 
fallen  upon  his  son  John,  who  succeeded  him  in 
the  presidency  of  Dartmouth  College. 

But  in  other  pursuits  than  the  quiet  one  of  the 
teacher  did  the  early  Wheelock  ancestry  also  dis- 
tinguish themselves.  For  courage  and  patriot- 


Appendix  49 

ism  were  they  noted  from  the  days  of  Gershom, 
the  son  of  Ralph,  who  is  said  to  have  been  "  a 
mighty  hunter  of  wild  beasts,"  through  the  days 
of  the  Colonial  Wars,  to  the  end  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  Another  son  of  Ralph,  and  grand- 
father of  President  Wheelock,  Eleazer  of  Medfield, 
who  afterwards  removed  to  Mendon,  is  an  illus- 
tration. It  is  related  "that  he  commanded  a 
corps  of  cavalry,  and  was  very  successful  in  re- 
pelling the  irruptions  of  the  Indians  upon  the 
new  settlements,  and  became  extensively  known 
and  feared  by  those  sons  of  violence  and  murder. 
He  treated  them  with  great  kindness  and  hu- 
manity in  peace,  and,  frequently  joining  them  in 
the  chase,  he  reconnoitered  the  country  and  dis- 
covered their  retreats.  During  the  war  with  the 
Indians  his  house  in  Mendon  was  converted  into 
a  garrison,  to  which  the  settlers  in  the  vicinity 
resorted  for  safety.  It  was  several  times  be. 
sieged,  and  in  imminent  danger,  but  providen- 
tially preserved."  Ephraim,  a  great-grandson  of 
Ralph,  served  four  years  in  the  French  and  In- 
dian Wars,  and  was  a  captain  at  the  siege  of 
Louisburg.  He  was  also  a  colonel  in  the  War 
of  the  Revolution,  and  commanded  a  regiment 
in  the  Continental  Army.  He  was  at  Ticonder- 
oga  and  Crown  Point.  It  is  further  related  of 
him  that  he  was  in  the  first  council  of  war  of 
7 


50  Appendix 

the  Revolution,  held  at  Cambridge,  April  20, 
1775.  Anthony  Wheelock,  who  mustered  a  com- 
pany into  service  at  Worcester,  Mass.,  in  1760, 
was  a  commissary.  Captain  Moses  Wheelock, 
great-grandson  of  Ralph,  born  in  1737,  died  1801, 
who  was  settled  in  Westboro,  was  in  the  regi- 
ment of  Col.  Artemus  Ward.  Captain  Gershom 
Wheelock,  of  Shrewsbury,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  the  first  settler  in  that  town,  was  one  of 
the  first  appointed  sergeants  in  a  certain  military 
company.  He  became  an  ensign,  a  lieutenant, 
and,  in  1742,  commanded  as  captain  in  the  regi- 
ment of  Col.  Nahum  Ward.  He  died  in  1770, 
aged  77  years.  Simeon  Wheelock,  another  of 
Ralph's  great-grandsons,  of  Uxbridge,  Mass.,  was 
appointed  one  of  a  committee,  by  act  of  the 
town,  to  correspond  with  other  committees  with 
reference  to  the  difficulty  between  Great  Britain 
and  North  America.  He,  too,  was  in  the  Revo- 
lutionary War,  and,  at  the  call  of  Lexington, 
acted  as  first  lieutenant  in  a  company  of  Minute 
Men. 

Later  generations  of  the  Wheelock  family  have 
generally  applied  their  talents  to  manufacturing 
and  mercantile  pursuits,  and  have  become  suc- 
cessful and  prominent  in  these  lines.  Not  a 
few,  however,  have  embraced  the  professions, 
and  some  have  become  missionaries,  bearing  the 


Appendix  5 1 

name  with  honor  to  themselves  and  to  the  family 
at  large. 

Perhaps  enough  has  been  written  to  prove  that 
our  ancestors  were  men  of  character  and  led  lives 
worthy  of  emulation,  and  have  left  their  descend- 
ants a  heritage  of  no  mean  quality,  but  one  in 
which  we  may  surely  take  pride.  If  what  has 
been  shown  shall  incite  those  of  this  and  follow- 
ing generations  to  keep  the  name  of  Wheelock 
inviolate  from  all  evil,  and  inspire  them  with  an 
ambition  to  prove  themselves  worthy  successors 
of  an  ancient  and  honored  name,  then  this  little 
book  will  not  have  been  prepared  in  vain. 

THOMAS  SEABURY  WHEELOCK. 


[NOTE. —  Owing  to  the  difficulty  of  reproducing  the  fine  lines  of  the 
coat-of-arms  in  an  impression  on  the  outside  of  the  book,  the  liberty  has 
been  taken,  contrary  to  the  announcement,  to  have  a  picture  taken  by  a 
new  process,  and  inserted  as  a  separate  leaf  within  the  book.  By  this 
change  of  plan  a  much  more  faithful  copy  of  the  cut  in  Ormerod's 
Cheshire  has  been  obtained  than  could  have  been  secured  by  the  first 
plan.] 


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